


She watches him Sleep

by Oswald



Category: Halo
Genre: F/M, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-02 04:46:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oswald/pseuds/Oswald
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>31, 557, 593, 31,557, 594, 31, 557, 595…</p>
            </blockquote>





	She watches him Sleep

_Cortana watches him as he sleeps._

_It’s all she has now—the sleeping giant in front of her. Sometimes she walks to him, places her tiny hands on the glass and pretends she can feel his breath on hers._

_Other times she ignores him—looks into the inky black of space, tries to count the stars.  After a while, it just gets boring, counting the same stars again and again. So she’d go back to watching him. Master Chief, Spartan 117._

_ John._

_She lets the name roll of her tongue, John, John…the hero._

_The man who saved her. The man who saved them all._

.

~*~

.

She’s dying. She knows this well.

Cortana’s okay with that. She’s lived a good life, an important life. One that people will remember for ages to come. She’d experienced so much, so many amazing things, met so many amazing people. She had helped save a planet, _many_ planets, hell, they’d saved a _species_ …and not more then one. All in all, she had no regrets.

But as they pass a swirling mass of color, of oranges and blues and a mess of stars, she suddenly feels so small.

The float by slowly, inch by painful inch: it’s a beautiful sight, awe-inspiring.

Once upon a time, it would have just seemed like calculations. Like chemicals and equations—once upon a time, Cortana wouldn’t have classified this as _beauty_.

But now?

Oh now…now she _does_.

And it scares her.

Not because emotions are so foreign to her—she’s always had them, for as long as she was created. But because now, she wishes she didn’t. She wishes she couldn’t feel, couldn’t feel the preverbal ‘fluttering in her chest.’  They hurt. Not like the Gravemind’s cold, writhing tentacles, no, those hurt in a different way. A way she honestly preferred.

Because that pain could be stopped. And it could be slowed.

But this…this…oh this pain is so dull, so low, she can’t even pinpoint WHAT it is.

She had asked Chief—no. No, not Chief, _John_. His name was _John_ , goddamn it, and she was going to call him that—She has asked John what emotions were like when they’d first met.

He had grunted, and muttered something along the lines of “Pay attention to the mission.”

So she had—all work and no play, she’d groused, but finished her task.

“I don’t really know.” The Chief said a moment later, in a brief period of respite, “I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Neither have I.” She murmured.

And thus, their first conversation began.

~*~

What had always struck her odd was that no one else thought he talked—contrary to the fact, they’d had much conversation over the years, conversed over many different things. He’d learned from her and…well, she _learned_ from him. But when it wasn’t with the boisterous Johnson or the all-business Miranda, you’d be loathe to hear him speak a word to anyone else.

For a while, Cortana theorized that he was scared—trapped in the same circle for so long, it would make sense that he didn’t understand how the soldier’s culture worked. How he could talk to them? And when they walked down the halls, she would hear the whispers ‘Jesus he’s huge’, ‘What a freak’, ‘Weird guy’

She knew he could hear them too.

Contrary to popular belief, however underneath the mask of a Spartan, laid a man. Cool, composed, but still as flesh and blood as any of the other soldiers—bullets hurt him, he could break and be broken. But he would heal himself, wash away the blood, and keep that logical demeanor. Pain was just a hindrance, pain was to be ignored, and the mission was all that mattered.

That was John, Cortana mused as she watched the colours fade away into black once again. He ate, breathed, slept the _mission_. Except, he barely did any of those things, because the _mission_ came first.

‘What will you do now?’ she thinks sometimes, watching him with half-lidded eyes, ‘the mission’s over…you’re free.’

“You’re free John.”

He didn’t respond. He was too busy sleeping.

.

_“What’s being human like?”  
“I’m not human, Cortana.”  
“Then what are you?”  
He didn’t hear her over the gunfire_

.

Maybe he dreams, she wonders. Maybe he dreams about how things _could_ have been, if everything was “normal”. If he’d had a “normal” childhood, in a “Normal” place—if their adventures were just the eccentric writing of an author in a novel or on a screen.

Maybe he dreams that he could have a child, _children_ —a girl with little pig-tails and a boy with freckles and dark green eyes.

Maybe he would have a wife.

What would she look like, Cortana wondered? Would she be slim? Curved? Would her hair be long and hang loosely down her back? Or would it be trim, slightly curved at the edges, and bounce in the air?

Maybe it would be a girl with shoulder-length hair that curved at her shoulder gently, but not too much. That was soft and smooth, and not a stray hair in sight.

Maybe he would love her. Maybe he would love her _a lot_.

For a moment, Cortana imagined them, John and the woman. Walking in a park, an umbrella slung between them, talking as they cleaned up the kitchen as kissing the children goodnight. Maybe he would leave her to go to work, a boring desk job (simple, but well-paying) and maybe he would come home and bring her little gifts. Nothing big—a flower made of newpaper, or a leaf from a fresh-borne sapling. Maybe he would get her something special…

Maybe he would surprise her with a peach, an orange. Sure, leaves from trees was a rare thing now-a-days, but _fruit_? Actual, fresh fruit? That would be a special thing indeed.

Maybe she would gasp…and then she’d smile, and turn and kiss him on the cheek, and then on the mouth.

And he’d laugh, and kiss her back.

Cortana closed her eyes with a sigh, pushing the thoughts from her head

.

_“You know what I’ve always wondered?”  
“What?"  
“Do you think anyone thinks about us? Not just as TOOLS but as…nevermind.”_

_._

They pass another nebula, pillars of colours adorning the sky.

It is said that 7 seconds for an AI with nothing to do is agony. And that’s correct: those first seven seconds were nightmarish. And so where the other 31, 557, 593 that followed.

But she adapted: she organized her thoughts, came up with ideas and stories and saw them to through the end. She reordered her thoughts (though, when she REALLY thought about it, the task became all the more frivolous) and remembered the things she’d experienced.

The second year was much better then the first.

“Happy Birthday” she told John when the day came, “I didn’t get you anything. I’m sorry.”

He never responded.

She was okay with that. Because she could _imagine_ what he would say _“That’s fine, I didn’t want anything_.” And it really _would_ be fine, because he had all he really wanted.

They’d never celebrated his birthday before their imprisonment on The _Forward onto the Dawn_.  They hadn’t had the _time_. She had asked him once, asked him _when_ he was born.

“2510” He’d murmured.

“I know, but what _date_.”

He didn’t answer.

So Cortana decided it would be the 25 of December. No rhyme or reason for the date, no real logic behind it.

“I like the way it sounds.” She said simply. And John agreed.

When the first year rolled by, she had looked at him, wished him happy birthday, and then proceeded to scream at him. To curse and accuse, and flip her preverbal lid. And then she broke down, screamed at him to come back, screamed to him that she was lonely, she was so, so lonely, and she didn’t want to be lonely anymore. That it hurt, that _she_ hurt.

He hadn’t heard her. Mostly because, instead of _screaming_ , like she had thought she was doing, she was whimpering. Pitifully crouched on her holosphere, pulling at her ‘hair’. The loneliness, the cold bitter _solitude_. She was going mad, she had thought, she was going mad, and when John finally awoke she would be nothing less then insane.

She calmed down a few days later, collecting herself to start counting the stars again. She always stopped before she came to the last one, however: most times, she just got board, but other times, she forgot what number she was last on.

.

~*~

.

Sometimes, Cortana would lie against his cyrotube, press her cheek against the glass and pretend that she would human. That she was wrapped up in his arms, and he was holding her close as they drifted through space An eternity, sleeping with the only one you trusted?

That sounded nice.

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy All! I finally got an AO3, and let me say, I hope this was a way to get on the right foot XD  
> I'd like to think that this story will continue: I certainly hope so. This was inspired by a lot of things, but a lot of it came from some of my own loneliness. But that's a story for another time ;)  
> I used the song 'Unthinkable' by Drake and Alicia Keys: amazing song, and hits really deep. Totally suggest it.
> 
> Master Chief and Cortana belong to Bungie. And thank you, Bungie for introducing me into the very first fandom I ever got into :)


End file.
